Connecting Nearby Nature: Spatial Practices and Pro-nature Performance of Children’s Community Nature-Friendly Workshop

In the current urbanization process, children’s connection with nature is becoming increasingly distant. To address this issue, many cities around the world advocate for increasing children’s nature connection by nature education. However, researches in the field have largely focused on parks, with less emphasis on children’s daily lives. This study selected communities in Shenzhen as case studies to explore the potential of community environments in nature education, involving 91 children across four representative communities. Through a series of practical activities, it deeply promoted children’s interaction with the community natural environment and systematically collected data on children’s participation, levels of nature connection, and subjective feedback. The environmental characteristics and the combination of suitable activities were verified as the core path to stimulating pro-nature performance through practical activities. Furthermore, this study constructs a “community environmentnature education-daily activities” framework. The framework uses the community’s natural environment as the foundation, nature education as guidance, and daily pro-nature activities as practice. The positive role of community environmental features, such as rich natural elements in marginal spaces, concentrated natural elements in community parks, and continuous natural elements along community pathways, in promoting children’s pro-nature behaviors is particularly emphasized by the framework. The results of this study not only provide a scientific basis for optimizing the design of community natural environments and enhancing their nature education functions but also offer practical guidance and strategic support for conducting nature education practices at the community level.